The Jobless Goddess

What a week. I interviewed two really remarkable people: Antonino D’Ambrosio and Aamion Goodwin. That’s pronounced Ah-mayan for all you who were as clueless as myself.   I’ve had a thing for Frank Serpico ever since I saw the movie “Serpico” some 45 years ago and plastered Al Pacino’s face on my teenage bedroom wall. That was Al’s big break you know. Anyway, now D’Ambrosio has made a documentary with the real live Frank Serpico. I’m here to tell you, it may be because I’ll be 60 in a few years, but that 81-year-old Italian American is still very easy on the eyes.   The more D’Ambrosio told me about Frank, the more I fell for him all over again. He went up against NYC police corruption in the early 1970s and ended up paying the ultimate price…he’s still got a bullet lodged in his brain. Sometimes this whole newspaper thing is pretty darn sweet.   Then I talked with Aamion Goodwin. At first I was stuck on the fact that he said “right on” a few times in our initial conversation. Then I

I’m getting a real kick out of my co-workers these days. I’m working with about a half dozen young women — young being the operative word. They’re all so freaking competent it kills me. They can write like it’s nobody’s business, they all take great photos to go with their stories, and they almost always laugh at my jokes. I call them ‘the girls.’ They’re either about to go to university, just leaving university, or all done with it and on their way. They do yoga and eat a lot of avocados. We live on Martha’s Vineyard and none of them know who John Belushi is but they all know they should keep using the same plastic cup for take out iced coffee over and over and over again. If they see a bug, they think twice before killing it. Actually they leave it for me to kill because they couldn’t possibly… and they know I won’t hesitate. We get along just fine the girls and me. Oh, there’s a little trouble when I insist on running the window air conditioner up in our second floor of

So I’ve had what you could call a case of the pneumonia. It was not pleasant. And to top it off it happened in San Antonio, Texas. Like I wasn’t sweating before the fever. I was there to see my niece Michelle, who by the way kept asking me, “Are you going to write about this?” which is funny because she’s a writer too. I naturally said, “Oh no, of course not.” And here we are. Thinking back, the best part of that trip teeters between meeting my two great-nephews, Oliver and Isaac, and having a couple of beers with their Yaya, my sister, who I haven’t had beers with in decades. Like I said, it’s a toss-up. There’s also the fact that I got to spend time with my niece’s husband Alex. He’s a hardcore military guy. He teaches other military guys how to be military policemen. I’m not going to gamble on writing anything about him. He’s from Wisconsin though, which I like. And he likes to cook, which I also like. I thought to myself before I ever left my nice cocoon of Martha’s Vi